Sir Myshkin

What Frosticus is referring to is a wider evaluation of realistic performance expectations that go beyond just a raw DPS value. I am one of the early players that pushed the idea of "prep" on Masterminds because it does demonstrate two different scenarios and gives better perspective to the performance and ability of a given set/combination. A MM that beams their entire squad onto a Pylon and drops all their buffs in one fatal swoop against that static object is going to walk in with a huge amount of burst, and try to carry it forward. If your pets wipe though, many would restart the run all over, some might just resummon if it's just one or two. In an AV fight, are you going to run and give up your gains, or try and refortify as fast as possible and keep going? Sometimes the AV's show up unexpectedly (get missed, spawn, whatever) and catch players off guard with a squad wipe. For MMs specifically it becomes a measured metric of the net survival and performance than just raw DPS. How efficiently can they get moving and how effective is that damage while under fire? Can you get your entire squad up, running, and dishing pain faster than a Scrapper or Stalker could've just annihilated the target on their own and bypassed your efforts? Not saying you'd walk in with no toggles and absolutely zero prep, but the idea is practicing more of the in-combat ideal and getting your squad summoned on the fly, buffed, and fighting; what kind of time does that generate? For comparisons sake I did this with my Robotics/Kin a long while back. Tackling a Pylon wasn't initially an intentional thing, I was just running through the RWZ after an MSR and got tagged by a Pylon. I had nothing summoned and only my core toggles active, but in that moment I wanted some honest pay back. I zipped over to the Pylon, spawned everything while under fire, buffed, and went to town. The whole process lasted a simple seven minutes and change (as I recall, and with very little Incarnate progress beyond Alpha). Pet summon time is an integral aspect of a MM's game play, they need to know what extreme they can survive with their pets, and also what they can survive without them in order to get the squad back to full. If an AV topples your T3 and a couple of your T1's, your DPS tanks and that is why pet summon time has everything to do with DPS. It's one thing to understand what your isolated DPS is, but another thing to know what it takes to get it moving and whether you can survive the intake process, and this is what more and more people are starting to look at. What's the survivability on the other side of that DPS coin?

Their Github (which actually has a lot of info/links) Their Twitter Their Youtube Channel They do technically have a website, but I won't link to it because it fails authentication for safe passage. They do seem to post up randomly to Twitter more than anywhere else, the most active/current stuff on Github is about six months ago. It's pretty typical of them to not really say much of anything unless there's a significant update. They are technically on Issue 2 of the game at this point due to issues (files/bugs/reasons) with Issue 1/0. As I recall the reason they targeted the beginning of the game was a bit more about the fact that some of those early releases actually contained source code in the install files which gave them insight for how to build the server side of things. I don't think they were "rebuilding" the game, but just trying to build enough of a server engine to take the game's client side content and execute it (so map instancing, NPC AI, attack functions, etc). They did come out a year ago and say they were "still working" on SEGS, but they've also been "working" on it since 2012 and still haven't cracked it. I'd imagine there being raw access to the entire source code at this point kind of kills any steam they had left in their sails.

Tankers will generally stand to be easier on hitting cap goals more efficiently than Brute variants, but Brutes can/will have better ST damage typically (even at the extreme end it still exists, just a closer gap). If you're looking specifically at Radiation Armor paired with Super Strength as is posted here, the Brute variant tries to get as close to 90% as possible but teeters out around 80%, the Tanker is more capable of getting to 90% on more stats, but they both have a few short comings in Negative and Psionic. Generally most of your game content you'll be fine and don't have to worry about defense at all. It's possible for a full Resistance character (at the 90% cap) to shrug off a considerable amount of defense debuff. Essentially, as the v1 builds are concerned, Yes the Tanker will be more survivable and the Brute should be a bit stronger on ST, but the Tanker will have the edge back in AoE function. Up until recently I'd been playing the Tanker variant because its damage is comparable and the build is a bit easier to cap (and it can do it much sooner) than the Brute. The "up until..." part of that comment is in part to some changes I made for my own personal approach. Having Adrenal Booster and Meltdown on cycle gives the build a lot of extra smash and works great for teaming to build up extra value, but I found I was often forgetting to pop one or the other, and I was starting to seek harder content from a Solo perspective and I decided I really wanted to close the Negative/Psi gaps more than I wanted to play around with some extra damage. Unfortunately the "final" build variant (v3) I landed on for myself is a full departure from the Mad King ideal (Procs are cut in half, no longer has the FF+Rech anywhere, completely cuts Adrenal and Meltdown just serves as supportive filler during Hybrid downtime for added damage). Variant 2 of the build (v2) however still holds everything in it, but it shifts over to Cardiac to get there so the gross build damage does drop a bit, but it becomes a bit more end-efficient as a trade off. They key for it was the inclusion of some defense buffer and getting Negative/Psi bumped higher. This is v2 (not posted anywhere else):

Well, if we're gonna go PSA, lets go full tilt for new comers: This is your icon to drop Spoilers into your posts: It is accessible for the added tools function on mobile when replying just the same as it is on Desktop (there's a little extended menu with the icon if you have shrunk menus). You can multi-quote folks by hitting the "+" next to "quote" and it'll stack those quotes up across multiple pages until your finally get to your reply box and hit "insert". You can also quote just a specific section of another person's response by just selecting/highlighting the part you want and waiting a second, a box will show up: and this even works on mobile, so cool! When you add an image to your post, you can also edit its size and such by "CTRL+Right Click" on the image itself: (look, this post is getting so meta!) You can also link to things in very interesting ways, one by just pasting a link into the reply box and hitting enter, if it's within the forum, or a link to a video it'll insert it as a special box (or the video itself) automatically (works on mobile too). If you'd rather have a clean link, or want to cut out the whole "http...blah" nonsense for non-specialty linkage, you can link any or all of your text by highlighting it and clicking this icon: which will auto-fill your chosen text and make adding links easier without worrying about formatting or errors as you type. Because some folks don't see it there, or are unfamiliar with it, you can also give a thanks or other consideration to a post that lets someone know via the notifications that you've acknowledge their response and you've read it even if you don't reply with this: Yes it does link to the reputation system, which is besides the point. I personally find it a nice convenient way to just give acknowledgement without going through a post that amounts to "uh, yup/agreed/thanks"

My guess is probably in part to general enhancement in a power having the IO's convert based off a super-ridiculous percentage was the simpler (easier) method. If someone put KB enhancements into the power and all the IO conversion did was scale it to .67, the additional enhancement may conflict/stack and move it back up. Having it the other way means none of that matters because (on its own) it'll never exceed .67 magnitude. The proc effect from Overwhelming Force however is--to the best of my knowledge--set at .67 magnitude as a one-off separate effect. Because they are two individual abilities contained in the same IO, there really isn't an alt-function that's likely going to prevent the effect that's occurring. It's much simpler to just use the Sudden Acceleration in the big-bang AoE's.

Thank you for taking it a step further in your approach. I didn't have time to mess with it any longer last night, but you were seeing what I was speculating (as Bopper said, missing 'IgnoreStrength' flag, I just didn't know what the flag was called 😄 ). Rage definitely made [the bug] blatantly obvious instead of just mildly odd (and occasionally inconvenient), but we know the who, what, where, and why, now we just need a fix. I shall forward it accordingly. Also, funny stories are always welcomed.

May have found a trigger, updated the main post accordingly. Able to repeat the effect when zoning during a Rage crash, specifically looks to be (as confirmed by this one build at least) Aegis +Status/Psi Res, Impervium +Psi Res, and Reactive +3% Res causing the negative stat value. Now having been able to repeat it on-command, I haven't seen any other values report back negative anywhere else across the character's combat attributes. @Veracor if you still have that test character, try heading to a spot you can quickly jump zones back and forth (thinking TUNNEL or the RWZ Portals, honestly it works better with base-porting macro for speed of click - click with no pop up), Start stacking Rage and when it crashes, watch the Resistance stats for the above and keep zoning back and forth. Reactive IO goes negative for about two seconds, the other two stay for 4ish. When I popped zone to zone, I could watch Reactive's effect drop, zone, and regain the effect on load so long as the Rage Crash was in effect. @Bopper Figured I'd send you a chime as well to see if you can replicate off this too since you have a Granite/SS still correct? Curious if you can get it with Rage crash, and also curious if you have an impact with Granite's -Dam aspect. If it's percentage effected, curious if it drops just a tad or would otherwise be noticeable assuming you have those IO's in your build (or could pop them in for testing)?

Small aside, OF in Explosive Blast is actually the best power in Energy Blast to put that proc into specifically because it has that secondary proc effect. Explosive's KB chance is only 35%, tossing the OF in there ups the odds of getting a successful KD sweep if it's a 10+ spawn making the power a lot stronger from a crowd-control perspective. 😃

No, unfortunately I believe it still does. The Overwhelming Force Unique and the Sudden Acceleration conversion IO are both doing the exact same thing in regards to KB > KD, but the problem with OF proc is that secondary effect of stacking additional KD. The Magnitude on Dawn Strike is enormous at nearly 19pts, it really wants to push things away, unfortunately when you put either of the above enhancements in there's a maximum percentage it drops the mag down to which looks to be .27, and then the OF proc is going off at the same time, instantly stacking into enough total mag to inflict actual KB (0.94 I believe). As I remember this is the same thing that happens with Nova and why it must be a SA: KB>KD instead of the OF. You end up with this: Solar Flare and Proton Seekers have a much lower mag value, and when converted it's a blip of .06 and .07, even with the proc's stacked effect it's still low enough to only be KD.

Or like Siege popping his 7,000+ heal every time he hits 20% HP 😑

Not that I've caught, no, and I tend to have my combat logs separated into multiple purposes for easier sifting. Such is the randomness of this issue. I can't find a method to replicate it from a character perspective. I've also had a couple others recently mention to me experiencing this issue on their own characters, one another Rad/SS, the other not. I went through several attempts at a solo MoITF in the last two days and had the bug hit me on Mission 2. I did another pressure test on my build earlier today and hit the P2W "Return To Battle" resurrect and the event occurred on resurrection, I re-planted rather quickly so it was impossible to grab anything other than visually seeing the -### all over my combat attributes. Given that I've changed some of my Incarnates, all of the following currently qualify: T4 Alpha Musculature Core and Cardiac Core, Interface Degenerative Radial, Destiny Ageless Core, T3 Hybrid Assault (left tree radial) and Lore Carnies (left tree radial).

If my memory serves me correctly I believe this was talked about back on Retail Live and the original Devs said there was something about the code-string for Influence that they couldn't increase the holding cap because it caused some weird and troublesome bugs to pop up. I want to say something along the lines of possibly crashing a character or something. I ... don't 100% remember, it was 8+ years ago and all... Edit to add: Essentially being able to e-mail Influence was their way of appeasing players both from a fund-transferring aspect, and fund-storage aspect.

Make ya a deal: Nerf Rage, then we'll talk.

My original build I had been using didn't sport any kind of defense at all and heavily leveraged FF+Rech procs for the core of its global recharge, without it I was only at ~120% (w/ Hasten) so between the gap in resists, and the Nictus sporting recharge debuffs it was enough of a hindrance that they were able to kill me. Honestly for all the trouble it caused purely in the pursuit of the badge, I wasn't otherwise troubled by it, but it did make for a bit of a story! In the end it got me to refocus the build in a new direction that closes out the gaps (excluding the impossible Cold) and made it a bit stronger overall as a result. Having done so many repeated tests with Bio/SS and knowing just how sensitive it is to variance, 3:00 with Rad/SS (as I was trying to push it) was disappointing but ultimately not surprising. There were a lot of factors that played into it between the recharge on KO Blow, the added animation times to activate Adrenal Booster and Meltdown (esp with its 3/s) were all eating into the probability. What it ultimately comes down to is actually the damage aura however. The math on it was posted up in another thread a while back and the short end of it is high-yield damage buffing on damage auras has a pretty significant total gain. Since I'm not out to specifically spike Pylons I've no intention of altering the build towards that direction, but I also don't think it'd end up with much of a significant difference. As it stands I already have access to all three -Res procs, but I stripped down my damage proc count in the process which leaves me some unsavory lapse during the Rage crash. Incidentally the entirety of the Pylon test is (was) to prove ability to take down an AV, and I just did that six times in a row at +4 so I suppose I'm good 😄 Was it -300% (or close to it) and specifically that stat? Might be possible if so. Specifically to Psi it looks to be linked to the Psi Resist granting Unique/Singular IO's like in Impervium and Aegis. Other IO's like those are impacting other areas as well.

I'll have y'all know the following is 100% y'all's fault. I've been gradually working through AV's with my Rad/SS/Soul testing him out solo and seeing how things fair. He's not had many faults or struggles dealing with anything I've thrown at him, and seeing a few others tackling the ITF, I thought "... why not?" Originally the build was extremely focused on proc utility and damage output (maximum effort), which left a couple of gaps in his stats that were troublesome to fill while trying to be hands-off from the attacks. As such, his Negative Resistances were only 76%, but that 14% gap from cap was apparently a semi's worth of space in the second mission of the ITF and they preceded as such: Plow Coming Through! Figured I'd just try and rush each crystal and bounce as fast as possible through the missions, discovered that a the gap I had was a bit too significant and forced me to slow down, as which the unrelenting ambushes followed me through the map and just swarmed me endlessly and I eventually planted from general inability to just stay standing at -93% Defense and off-cycle heals on a pure Resistance build. Walked in to the first spawn, a blip went across my combat stats and I was face planted. Happened so quick I couldn't even grab a shot of it, but pretty certain I got nailed with the negative-stats bug (posted in Bugs). I saw a lot of red out of the edge of my focal point in the combat stats box right before I ate dirt. Frustrating, but whatever, restart (again). Got halfway through the hordes of Nictus, this time leaving Crystals intact to sweep them all in one rush to try and avoid dealing with ambushes at all. I'm pulling a patch of Lobsters and Squids together and I get stuck in the geometry of the cave, can't quite get myself out or get a good angle to Jaunt away and I realize nothing in my second tray (all crowd control and heals) are firing off, I've gotten hit with connection lag to the server (been experiencing it off and on last few days pretty hard core, kinda bummer deal). By the time everything catches back up, I'm vastly in the red and just can't make it out. Face planted again. Alright, back in action! Halfway through again and I'm up to the room where two crystals can spawn fairly close to each other. Pushing along and before I realize it I've tapped the wrong number on the wrong target and KO BLOW wipes the Crystal, ambush drops on my head, second group of Nictus nearby suddenly gets alerted and I'm pretty tired, not really surprised I wiped. Note: Each of the above was a complete restart of the ITF to keep MoITF potential, which means re-running the first mission each occurrence. 😣 It was a strugglesome hour last night, super bummed me out. I logged out of the game and popped open Mid's and stared at it for (admittedly) too long before going to bed and returning to it this morning. I revised it twice in a two-stage reduction of utility trying to see where I could draw the line at "<3 Procs" and "Fill the dang gap." I also knew that I wanted to do one thing before I pulled the trigger, and that was to check the current build's actual performance on a static object, so I jaunted over to the RWZ and started up a good ol' fashioned Pylon Run-Chain and started ripping through them. Collectively I was walking away with times between 3:00 and 4:00 which was truthfully a little disappointing. The impact of cycling two minute-long powers back and forth, along with not having a consistent in-build -Res, nor a damage aura, made it pretty difficult to even marginally approach what I could pull off on Bio/SS. I had my answer, so I pulled the trigger on the project and went into Mk3 of the Mad Tanker known as Carthage. Kept a couple of personal choices in the build that have his Melee Defense a bit lower than is possible, but I just couldn't give up Speed of Sound, I like the ability to flexibly bounce across the field on a Tank without movement restrictions. 300 million in IO investments and boosters (50!) later, I walked back into Mission 1 of the Imperious Task Force and sailed through it at the same clip I did before, nice! The real test was in Mission 2 however, and I clicked that cave door and faced round five... with flying colors. Putting a solid layer of dry-wall filler on that Negative gap made for a much smoother ride. Also, I've come to really hate ambush mobs solo that are auto-aggro and don't ever disengage. For the record, no it didn't take me 8:00 hours to complete! I stepped away for dinner and family for most of that, but I don't have an accurate time for the actual play through. I know I didn't beat anyone else's time either way. Not being able to hop-through and Crystal snipe Mission 2 adds its an unfortunate amount of time. I also did not "buff enemies" as I did this on the live server as Carthage's first run of the ITF, and to achieve the MoITF badge, and given that he's only T3 on Hybrid Assault, and does have a Lore but only T3 Radial of Carnies (Mistress and Support, it's ... kind of a terrible tree, but I'd wanted something "different"). Also no P2W or Base Buffs. Currently other than his Alpha and Interface, the rest of his Incarnate tree is built up for the previous build and without a more supportive Hybrid and Destiny I didn't see doing a enemy-buffed run as being worth attempting

There are a handful of circumstances where the Fighting Pool's attack assortment are a comparable replacement for main-set abilities, but not all. Another factor that comes into play is having to "own" all three abilities to get the full value (all +Buff benefits on each per each attack taken). For Scrappers and Stalkers this isn't the best choice just from the Critical perspective, but for the likes of Tankers and Brutes these can be fair use in a few places. For any other AT, they can become a solid Melee assortment of abilities to rely on for abnormal builds because of their strength (I built an entire Defender around it). For Martial Arts, if you just want Boxing and Cross Punch to be tools to help mix-in your Martial styles a bit, then they can work out well enough for that purpose, but you'd want to evaluate which powers are the best to exclude from MA so you're not trading out a "good" ability for one that was potentially "better." Martial Arts is a relatively pretty strong set on its own. In the case of something like Super Strength (FS* for those French folk 😉 ) Boxing has nearly identical stats to Punch, and Cross Punch is very close to Haymaker (plus CP is a cone) from a DPA (damage per activation) stand point, so they're a pretty easy one-for-one swap out. Why would I do this though if I'm just swapping one swing for another? Because of IO set capabilities. Cross Punch opens access to a -Res proc and the Force Feedback +Rech proc--because it is a cone and not a ST--which are both very good inclusions; added bonus that CP (at full benefit) also gives a short duration +10% recharge on its own. In a sense this is a little build-hacking or--for some--trickery and magic! Since Super Strength's core feature is really Foot Stomp, KO Blow, and Rage (being the multiplier for everything), we don't loose out on anything from the main set, but gain a few extra unique tools to support it by going into the pool. Past those two sets there aren't really any others that I'd say you'd be doing yourself any favors by dipping into Fighting intentionally for the attacks whether it be because of weapon, combo, or just the original set abilities just being better.

Is it strange that I thought about flipping common salvage for just a meager Inf difference (per unit to break even) purely for the entertainment value? I calculated I could sell 200 stacks for a magnificent 500,000 profit. I’d be rolling in it! Gonna have to get me a money bin!

Cheater 😛 I kid, I kid. Nice job.

Couple of things, most of which you can find in my signature. For a broad spectrum review of Defender options with procs, see the Proc Monster link, for suggestions on dealing with unique aspects of Storm, see the Mad King link. In regards to specifically proc activations and the Defender ATOs: procs have a minimum probability rate of 5%, fire off a low probability attack often enough and you’ll still get some reasonable return. Having the heal AoE in a low tier fast and often cycle attack will still get a few good triggers every minute. For the absorb proc having it in Tornado isn’t the best place because it’ll only trigger once for you at cast, and then no longer impact you. You want something like that in a power that fires off (or is connected to like a toggle) you in some fashion.

... I was dead serious going to do it. I was like setting font and everything, grabbing some good ol' Beetlejuice reference pics, the works. And then I typed in the @, got the name to pop and was like "Oh wow, are they really actually signed up?" Then I felt a bit bad about it, like summoning a maid to clean the dishes and decided against it 😅 I feel like we ought to save that genie wish for a more important endeavor.

The build has always been out in the wild. The last couple of days I've been intentionally popping open the combat attributes on loading (since that seems to be the most common time I catch it), which is how I captured the most recent two updated shots which happened upon exiting a mission, and then another after popping into a base. I tried rather aggressively to get it to pop on zone load by hopping (quite literally, and aggressively) all over Paragon last night and never managed to catch it again past justthe previous two occurrences out of ~40ish attempts. Even tried cycling an assortment of powers, did a couple more missions, nadda. It's vastly either too random, which is irritating, or is tied to a specific event of abilities being stacked, which is even more frustrating. What I've seen so far is it appears to be impacting Unique IO's slash IO's that provide a singular global bonus (Impervium, Aegis, +Psi Res, and Reactive's +3%) yet not all of them (Shield Wall, as a visible example).

On a Tanker: Energy Punch w/ 3 50 Damage IO's @ 1.056/s: 153 per Activation Total Focus w/ 3 50 Damage IO's @ 3.432: 544.4 per activation Energy Punch DPA for 1.056/s: 144.9 Total Focus DPA for 3.432/s: 158.6 Energy Punch's damage adjusted over 3.432/s: 497.25 Energy Punch over 3 activations (3.168/s): 459 Energy Punch if it misses 1 of 3 in 3.168/s: 306 Total Focus if it misses in 3.432/s: 0 TF>BS>ET>BS chain: 9.768, 1,743.6 damage, DPS of 178.5 DPS of chain w/ one missed TF: 122.76 DPS of chain w/ one missed ET: 107.1 DPS of chain w/ one missed ET and TF: 51.37 24.56 attacks per minute, at 5% miss: 1.24 attacks, of which 2 in 4 (50%) chance of being ET or TF ("equally" devastating). EP>BS>EP>ET>EP>B: 9.372, 1,609.1 damage, DPS of 171.69 DPS of chain w/ one missed EP: 155.36 DPS of chain w/ one missed ET: 97.27 DPS of chain w/ one missed EP and ET: 80.95 38.41 attacks per minute, at 5% miss: 1.92 attacks, of which 1 in 6 (20%) chance of being ET (most devastating). Purely for analysis. TF > ET chain is more promising, especially towards procs (if they can be included), but it takes a strong amount of global recharge to keep their probability up. EP inclusive chain is more forgiving on demands and is also more forgiving on misses, has more low-tier variety that one missed attack doesn't necessarily sink the proverbial ship. If my time on Kinetic Melee taught me anything it was: (Big Animation = Bad DPS) if (Big Animation = Best Attack) and (Big Animation * 2(Best Attack) = Very Bad DPS)

I actually rolled a TW/Regen a while back, he's a couple dozen Vet Levels into his career and fully T4'd. The short end of the story is Titan Weapons has never gotten in the way of my survival, and is in fact a direct link to the greater part of it (and for the record, I don't even use Defensive Sweep). I rolled him specifically to challenge the very idea that TW/Regen is a "bad pairing." It ended up being one my favorite characters to play. I find he also face-rolls a lot of the game's non-Incarnate content.

Regen is awesome, don't listen to the haters! What I can say is you can really help yourself out by pairing it with a primary that can balance a good amount of soft control effects like knockdown, or has some defensive tools to buff stats, or both. Claws plays well with Regen because it's a fast set and doesn't get in the way of the secondary when it needs to click something; it also has Shockwave which is a really nice and wide cone you can drop a KB>KD into and have a strong repeatable KD at your disposal. Staff, Katana, Broadsword, Martial Arts, Titan Weapons, and War Mace will all have some extra utility as well.

Yeah I've been chasing it for a couple of weeks now, the above was the first screen clip I was able to pull up fast enough to capture what might be causing it. Given I've experienced it in-combat a couple of times now I'm a lot more attentive on trying to figure it out because it's become a survival issue.